Mustard's Retreat to close uNi Coffeehouse season

The folk duo Mustard's Retreat with David Tamulevich and Michael Hough.

Mustard’s Retreat will bring a flavorful end to the 27th season of the uNi Coffeehouse Concert Series on Saturday.

David Tamulevich and Michael Hough bring their own silly songs, parodies, gentle love songs, vivid ballads and treasures from America’s vast traditional song bag to the Springfield stage.

As original as the music they write, the duo’s name combines a friend’s name, Nancy Mustard, and a famous traditional tune called “Bonapart’s Retreat,” noted Tamulevich.

“When I was playing the guitar one day she showed me a slide on the guitar that I didn’t know. So, I wrote an instrumental and in the long tradition of naming tunes, I named it after her,” said Tamulevich.

“At one point, Mike and I were cooks in a restaurant and were already playing music together, when we posted a list of names in the restaurant that we wanted to call ourselves. There were a lot of jokes and puns, but Mustard’s Retreat seemed to be the best original name among them and something different. That was back in 1974, and we’ve never stopped working since,” he added.

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Multi-instrumentalists – performing on acoustic guitar, electric bass, dulcimer, mandolin, harmonica, and penny whistle – the duo’s large repertoire draws on the dual influences they both experienced when growing up: the folk revival of the 60s as well as the explosive singer-songwriter movement.

“It’s all about community and bringing people together. We see ourselves as storytellers, writers and entertainers. We don’t want to hit someone over the head with our ideas, just open the door for them,” said Tamulevich about the songs they choose to sing.

According to Ed Brown, organizer of the uNi Coffeehouse Concert Series at the Unitarian Universalist Society Meetinghouse, a show by Mustard’s Retreat “always feels like it's designed for the people who have come to see them that day.”
“I think that’s due in part to the fact that we don’t have a canned show. We don’t come up with a list of what we’ll be singing until just before we go on stage. And, it depends on what’s going on in world at the time, and what part of the country we are in,” said Tamulevich.

“We also find that when we get on stage, we don’t get into more than three or four songs on the list before we start changing it up, depending on conversations we are having with the audience and the requests they are making. These are very interactive shows,” he added.

Audiences on Saturday night will likely hear the duo’s glowing ode to coffeehouse volunteers everywhere, who help to keep the music playing.

“When I became an agent years ago, I was working more in the folk community. I was inspired by this community of people all over the country, and the immense dedication they put into folk music putting content before profit. And, one day on an airplane while on our way to a folk festival, I told Mike about it,” said Tamulevich about the resulting song, which Brown noted will give uNi audiences an opportunity to sing their thanks for another season of folk music.

“The idea all along was that people would write their own verses to the song to celebrate the efforts of the volunteers in their area,” he added.